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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Interspecific gene flow enhances vectorial capacity
There are charismatic cases of gene flow between species, such as Neanderthals (see also Arun’s posts here and here), but the role of introgression in evolution remains poorly documented. Recently diverged species have incomplete reproductive isolation and can hybridize. Rapid … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, phylogenetics, Uncategorized
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Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder
Many animals use visual signals to scope out potential mates. In a new paper in Molecular Ecology, Sandkam et al. (2015) demonstrate that the variation underlying preference in female guppies could be explained by simple changes in expression and coding of … Continue reading
THREAT DOWN! Gene flow from polar bears into brown bears
What do you get when you cross a male polar bear with a female brown bear? Trick question: Nothing, because it doesn’t really happen!*
Life, death, and DNA methylation
You have a molecular clock ticking inside of you and, if you read it properly, it can predict how much longer you will live. Want to know how to read it? Well, grab your DNA methylation profiler of choice, measure … Continue reading
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The microbiome doesn't always explain everything.
Microbiome research is sexy. Just look at the Google Trends graph. Anyone and everyone is studying the gut, nasal, vaginal, skin, oral, aural, any-other-body-part microbiome. This means that a lot of research is getting published saying what constitutes a “healthy” … Continue reading
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The paludicolous life: peatmosses and pH
High dispersal should counteract local adaptation by continuously redistributing genetic variability. In the bryophyte Sphagnum warnstorfii, the North Atlantic may not be as formidable a barrier as expected. Spores may traverse the Atlantic Ocean to North America from Europe and vice … Continue reading
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Nature versus nurture in the human immune system
An organism’s phenotype is the result of its genotype and its environment. Teasing apart the relative importance of these factors in determining phenotype is a difficult task. However, monozygotic (i.e. identical) twins offer a natural experiment to test the contributions of genes … Continue reading
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A population genetic R-evolution
Uphill, both ways, in the snow, without shoes … quite apt when thinking of the dark days, in the not too distant past, in which a separate input file was needed for each popgen analysis in order to use a … Continue reading
Posted in howto, methods, population genetics, R, software, Uncategorized
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Whip it. Population structure and cross-species transmission of Whipworms
This may be my second worm-related post, but it comes from the PLoS journal that is first in my heart: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. And, as the journal name suggests, it is about a neglected tropical disease: the Whipworm (Trichuris … Continue reading
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